Re: Annotated Manual

[Sun, 26 Nov 2000] Simon Roberts said: > I agree, (plus get-user-notes could be abused by site users) but didn't want > to add a few hundred files to CVS without the blessing of whoever really > maintains the site. Plus, it needs the cron job, but that could be triggered > remotely for now. Before too many people do too much work on this, I think it might be wise to look at the website in general and the mirroring policy in particular for PHP.NET. It's been at least 2 years, I think, since designing the current version of the site, and (while I really like some aspects of it) there are things that could use some improvements. For example: - Load Time/Design: the current site is quite graphic-intensive. Not only does the site take quite a while to download for people on dial up, but it's probably quite the bandwidth hog for the popular mirror sites. Plus, I don't feel like keeping up on the latest DHTML implementations from Microsoft and Netscape, so I think (cool though they are), the pop-ups and mouseOvers should probably go. - Mirrors: I'm not completely sure, but I think a good number of our mirror sites are either off-line, out-of-date, or not rsyncing enough. Also, contact info for the mirror site admins is probably out of date. Also, I think it would be "nice" if all mirror sites followed the standard naming convention of <country_code>.php.net, with www.php.net simply being a portal site to redirect people to their closest mirror. - Manuals: as you've just stated, the annotated manual should be available on all mirror sites. Ditto for the search function(s). - Updateability: it's a pain in the ass to manually edit HTML to add news items, new links, projects, or sites. This should be databased, then generated into the PHP files that get rsynced. - Advertising: love it or hate it, the possibility exists for PHP to make some money off of it's popularity. There are probably other issues that need to be addressed. I've done a bit of quick work coming up with a new, leaner-cleaner looking framework for the site, which you can see at http://newsite.php.net. Only a mock up of the main page is there now (so don't bother clicking on the links). I don't have as much spare time to commit to a redesign (and I mean the programming) as I'd like, so I would like to propose forming a small sub-list of people who are willing to work on fixing up the site. I know Rasmus has some preliminary work on a management interface for letting users and staff add and maintain sites/projects/links/news items. I think Zak has done some work on this too. And I know the documentation people are always hard at work on translations and such. I guess I'd like to suss out how receptive people are to some of these ideas, and who's able to do what to make it happen. So I welcome your comments. - Colin